Booker Software announced today that it has raised $35 Million, which it will use to invest in sales and marketing capabilities and in developing vertical-specific products that “drive more value to merchants,” said CEO Josh McCarter, in a discussion with BIA/Kelsey.

McCarter noted that 9,000 locations are under contract and over 60,000 business users. These are users who are “logging in every day. They are not just signing on once a month” to create a promotion or similar feature. They use Booker’s services as an integral part of their business.

Next steps for the company will further leverage all the trends impacting services-based SMB marketing, including CRM; retention marketing; Point of Sales services; scheduling; and mobile apps via a partnership with Como.

“Last year, we refocused on things that help you grow and operate more efficiently,” said McCarter, noting that the company rebranded from Gramercy One to specifically focus on the SMB space, which now accounts for 80 percent of its revenue. “The data that Booker can aggregate really powers the growth engine,” he said. Services such as email and CRM are only as powerful as the data they can use.

While spas and salons continue to account for a significant portion of the company’s business (dating to its origins as SpaFinder), a number of verticals hold great promise, said McCarter. Pet services, daycare and after-school services (music lessons, art lessons) are doing “very well.” Another area of growth is a JV with The Golf Channel that enables customers to book tee times and other services.

The new round of funding is on top of $40 million previously raised. Several mid-sized funders that specialize in SMB services were included in the round, including Signal Peak (InfusionSoft) and Jump Capital (Swift Pages). The round was led by Medina Capital, a cloud infrastructure specialist.

Other investors included Revolution (Steve Case and Ted Leonsis), Bain Capital, TDF Ventures and Grotech Ventures. In addition, a “strategic investment” was made by First Data, the payment processing giant, who will be announcing details of its relationship with Booker in coming months.

McCarter noted that each investor brings a unique appreciation of Booker’s goals in serving the SMB community, which has been “underserved” by larger VCs, which McCarter called “SMB-averse.” But there is a definite need for SMB services, which focus less on return policies or other ecommerce issues. They are more about everything that a business needs, from scheduling services to POS innovation to equipment rentals. It is a $2.4 trillion space, he argued.

Booker Software CEO Josh McCarter

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Today at BIA/Kelsey’s SMB Digital Marketing conference, Agendize announced a smart watch app for managing appointments on the go. The new online scheduling software brings scheduling and CRM capability to the wrist — particularly fitting (excuse the pun) for service SMBs out in the field.

“Scheduling is a productivity application accessible from anywhere,” Agendize sales & marketing head Davy Bour told us, “so professionals can spend more time doing what they love and what ultimately grows their business: spending time with their customers. The Smartwatch app brings this connectivity, productivity and mobility to a brand new device.”

Look out for a longer conversation and video interview with the Agendize team next week to delve further into implications for watch appointments/alerts.

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Scheduling/booking is coming into its own as a key feature for SMBs, as more and more businesses tie their marketing and promotions to open slots in their schedule.

Key companies in the space include Full Slate (recently acquired by Intuit,) ReachLocal’s ReachCommerce, Groupon Scheduler, Agendize, Moon Valley Software, GenBook, Schedulicity, Maxipage and Hakema (in Europe). Another company, MyTime, was founded by RedBeacon founder Ethan Anderson and is an aggregator of scheduled appointments.

Another major player in the space is Booker, which has raised $42 Million. While focused on the beauty, health and wellness space, it also works with a wide range of national-local players.

Booker announced today a mobile app partnership with Como (formerly Conduit Mobile) to take scheduling beyond the desktop. The app takes less than 15 seconds for SMBs to create.

Mobile apps make a lot of sense in this context. A customer might make 12 appointments per year for cut and color treatments at a salon. For such a customer, a dedicated App — perhaps tied to a loyalty program — coule be especially useful. The same may not always be true for “discovery” segments such as restaurants and retail, which may be better aggregated in directories such as Yelp, Google, OpenTable or YP. Customers may also prefer booking an appointment directly with the SMB, rather than going through a directory site — or at least, this is what Booker is banking on.

Booker CEO Josh McCarter is a featured speaker at BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local: SMB Digital Marketing, which takes place Sept. 22-24 in New Orleans. You may register here.

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One of the hottest trends in local marketing is “National Local,” which accounted for 32.1 percent or $42.5 billion of the $132.5 billion spent on local media advertising in 2012. BIA/Kelsey projects that national’s share of local ad spending is expected to grow to nearly $51 billion by 2017. While sometimes obscuring “local local” marketing efforts (i.e. SMBs), the rapid rise of Mobile, effective Geo Targeting and marketing automation has permitted local to scale in unprecedented ways for national brands, franchises and retailers.

Yodle, for one, has been really zeroing in on maximizing its national local opportunities. The company provides marketing services to 40,000 local businesses, including a wide swath of national providers, such as Merry Maids and Miracle-Ear.

Today, the company announced the formal launch of its Centermark suite for such national local players. The suite has been launched as part of The Yodle for Brand Network division — as of July, its revised name for national local services. “Not all brands are national, and many national organizations don’t view themselves as brands,” noted SVP Fred Voccola, in explaining the new name.

Centermark’s various features include local SEO, social, local mobile and scheduling services. It has been in beta for the past six months with 2,000 customers, including franchisors, manufacturers and multi-location operators.

Voccola explains that the company’s primary goal with Centermark is to provide a consistent local Web infrastructure that provides better SEO and ultimately, conversion rates and ‘actionable business intelligence.’ It is not just to understand what the revenue was. We’re interested in what lead sources were used,” and external factors that may have contributed to a sale or other type of engagement, including left field factors that defy conventional wisdom, such as interest rates or weather, he says.

More critically, the use of suites like Centermark can strengthen the bond between national brands and their local entities, says Voccola. At BIA/Kelsey, we have observed that weak online and mobile offerings from brands have caused many franchisees to take control of their own marketing activities, often with mixed results. That probably doesn’t serve anyone’s goals.

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There are some occasions when you need to hire someone right away. At least that’s the hypothesis of Ginjex: The availability engine,” a new ad-supported U.K. directory that focuses on real-time hiring.

Launched by Mark Riley, a former exec with BT Tradespace, an SMB storefront provider, Ginjex may be considered the flip side of scheduling companies. It zeroes in on “all distressed inventory in any vertical,” says Riley. “It could also become a location-based deals aggregator.”

Are there that many categories that need to be hired right away? “The most applicable categories will be the ones which are the most flexible, local and over supplied or with distressed inventory,” says Riley. Casual, low-skilled labor such as car washers, house cleaners and landscapers come to mind. Categories that require “man and van” are especially urgent, he adds.

At the other end of the scale are “highly paid professionals for whom cancellations can be extremely costly if staff and space are booked. For example beauticians and dentists. If they can immediately flag up canceled slots (i.e., spare capacity), then they can win back that time. Time is money, as my grandfather always said.”

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Scheduling is seen as the next wave of  online marketplace services for SMBs, encouraging sticky usage, premium features and, in some cases,  highly contextual advertising. Scheduling vendors such as Agendize, Full Slate, MaxiPage and X Time are actively syndicating solutions.

Jumping aboard the scheduling trend is MerchantCircle, the SMB services company with 1.3 million registered SMBs. It announced today an all-cash acquisition of TimeBridge, an online meetings facilitator that incorporates scheduling among its other solutions. TimeBridge represents  MerchantCircle’s first acquisition.

CEO Ben Smith told us that MerchantCircle will use TimeBridge to incorporate a free, simple to use scheduling service for its merchants.  While TimeBridge is not primarily a scheduling platform, over time it has acquired 25,000 SMB customers over time. “We knew (scheduling) is something we’d have to have at some point in time,” said Smith.

Ultimately,TimeBridge’s value may be its use as an in-house technology vendor. CEO Yuri Nelkin is bring brought on as CTO of Merchant Circle, and the expectation is that his five-person Israeli team will work on a number of development projects for MerchantCircle.  Meanwhile, TimeBridge will continue to exist as a separate entity.

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